


Ground to Dust

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Deadpool (Comics), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bikers, Alternate Universe - Human, Cancer, Child Abuse, Dad Yondu, F/M, Family, Gen, M/M, Ravagers are a biker gang, Wade needs a goddam hug, Young Peter, Young Wade, young Nathan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-06-05 01:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6683179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a bike and a boy, and a lot of dead squirrels.</p><p>In which Peter Quill brings home a stray.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **The Ravagers obviously required a biker!AU. So I wrote one. It got out of control, but you're all used to that by now.**

First time Peter went hunting, he was eight and his grandpa sixty-four.

Grandpa ruffled Peter’s hair. He told him his mother loved him, in a voice that grew rawer every time Peter heard it, and let him carry the rifle. It was almost bigger than he was. Peter wasn’t allowed to shoot – not with that, not unless he was flat on his belly with grandpa correcting his every move: telling him how to breathe, how to focus, how to squint his eyes against the sharp noonday sun. Even so, he might have enjoyed the experience, had he not known it for what it was.

A distraction.

 

* * *

 

 _Take him to the woods,_ grandma said. _He shouldn’t see her like this._

Peter wanted to tell her he didn’t care. Since mom had returned from the doctor whey-faced and trembling, and dragged Peter to her chest as if she never wanted to let go, Peter had acclimatized to her changing face. Cheeks too thin. Jaw too pronounced. Browbones protruding, skin tight over the lines of her skull. The noises didn’t upset him either. He had his music – he could press the buds of the Walkman to his ears until the retches and moans from the room below faded.

But he did care about the smell.

It saturated the house. And grandma and granddad. Peter too. Peter hadn’t realized until Wade, the skinny kid kept back a year whose shiners were so fat you could scarcely make out his eye color, had collared him on the playground. He’d pushed his small, battered face towards Peter’s. When he inhaled noisily, Peter had held his ground in mutinous silence, not wanting to be sent home for another fight. But he hadn’t been able to control himself when Wilson pursed his busted lips and proclaimed to the gathering crowd: “Yeah, he stinks of death alright.”

Lunch break had ended with Wade pummelling Peter into the tarmac. Peter had given as good as he’d got, blocking what swings he could and taking those he couldn’t. He had achieved his pièce de résistance by yanking Wade’s ill-fitting pants to his knees, baring frilly pink panties to the world. Laughter swept the playground in disbelieving uproar. The commotion as all sixty students of Sunnyside Primary gazed upon Wilson’s chosen undergarments, while Wilson screamed expletives no child his age ought to know and trembled between fight and flight, had given Peter ample time to slink away.

He’d mulled the words over ever since. _You stink of death._

Like most children in quasi-rural Georgia, Peter knew what death smelt like. He’d seen the carcass of a deer at the side of the road, swollen to bursting, thick with flies and heat-haze. But mom’s death was different. It didn’t arrive in the flash of headlights, the blare of a horn, the screech and thump of impacting tyres. It was gradual. Measurable. Medicine packets were hooked to her IV line one after the other, and doctors came and went. The words _hospice_ and _health insurance_ and _who’s gonna look after Pete?_ were bandied around in hissed arguments held at the dead of night…

Peter, eavesdropping through the cracks in his floorboards, ignored the words. It was the wring and squish of the cloth he waited for. Grandma had a Way Things Were Done: the knives were laid out on the right and the forks on the left, and if you ate cack-handed you didn’t get pudding. Hands were to be washed before dinner, faces and teeth before bed. As a result, Peter’s presence in the room wasn’t required to imagine Grandma;s gnarled fingers kneading the sopping, fever-warm fabric. They dunked it and swished it through the cool pool in the sink, before reapplying it to mom’s balding forehead. Its final pass would halt above her flaky lips. For the duration of that pause Meredith Quill was Schrodinger’s Woman: neither alive nor dead. Then her next breath tickled grandma’s hand, and the cloth moved on.

 

* * *

 

“Peter shouldn’t see her like this,” grandma said next morning.

“I’ll take him hunting,” grandpa answered. Steps climbed the stairs to Peter’s room, and Peter had his boots on before grandpa could knock.

 

* * *

 

Homewards bound. Grandpa slung the rifle across his shoulders while Peter carried the brace of squirrels. Summer season had rolled in a week back, and already the hunters were culling them in their hundreds. Peter crunched through sun-dried leaves and scattered shot in equal measure, squirrel tails batting in the muggy breeze. The fresh, piney musk of the woodlands clung to their tiny bodies. If it weren’t for the gloss over their eyes, Peter would think they were sleeping.

Mom didn’t approve of boys his age handling guns. A year ago she’d have kicked up a hell of a fuss, bawling so loud the neighbours pounded the walls, telling grandma she was a perfectly capable mother and she’d raise her child as she damn well pleased. Mom didn’t shout anymore. Or sing. Or dance. When coherent enough to send grandma on an errand so she couldn’t shoo Peter away, mom held Peter tight as she could and whispered “I love you” into his hair, as if every time she said it was going to be her last.

Peter sniffed the squirrels again. He couldn’t understand why they smelt alive while mom smelt dead, or why mom was alive but he missed her already.

The edge of the wood neared. With it came the gleam of sun-softened asphalt from the road, which split the small town of Marmington from the treeline. As the brush thinned, the blackness grew until it was all there was: long and flat and obscuring Peter’s vision, a wedge a thousand miles long but only eight metres wide. He was so busy concentrating on placing his feet one in front of the other that he didn’t hear the rev.

 

* * *

 

Jim Quill, assuming otherwise, let his attention drift to the particulars of the world around him. Peter ambled somewhere ahead. Birdsong filtered from the canopy. Above and all around there radiated the sticky heat, gumming his shirt to his belly and heating the rifle barrel like a new-lit barbecue. The growl of the approaching motorcycle blended into the woodland soundscape, merging with the bullfrogs who croaked by the creek and the grasshoppers chirping in the long dry grass. Everything was blissful-slow, lethargic and lazy as if the entire world had put up its feet. The day couldn’t be more perfect.

Except for the thought of Merry, prone on the bed she’d been born in. Jim scratched his nose with the rifle butt. _It ain’t right_ , he thought to himself. _No parent should watch their child die._

After that, everything happened at once.

Jim remembered it as sounds, given he was looking in the other direction. To Peter, it was a selection of snapshotted images – the road at rapidly increasing proximity. When you got to within an inch of it, you noticed the irregularities: the cracked divot that’d widen to a pothole once autumn rolled round, the scattered dust, the lumps in the paint on the white lines. And the fresh skid-marks. But by the time they’d cooled, Peter was already face down.

_Thadda-thump._

_Crunch._

_Scrrrrrrrk –_

Silence, broken only by Peter’s feeble, belated scream.

Jim spun. If a child shouldn’t die before their parents, a grandchild certainly shouldn’t. The gun slid forgotten to the ground, and there was only one word on his tongue:

“Peter!”

 

* * *

 

“Grandpa!” Peter wailed. He struggled to sit, trembling head to foot. Squirrels lay scattered. One unfortunate specimen had fallen under the wheels. It’d been resolutely smushed. Mind agape, shock hollowing every nerve, Peter couldn’t believe he’d escaped the same fate.

“Peter!” Grandpa ran to him, fingers skidding across gravel-flecked skin, feeling for broken bones. Once certain he'd suffered only grazes and terror, he sandwiched the sobbing boy to him and carded furiously through his tangled hair. “You’re okay! Oh, thank the lord. What were you thinking, Peter? What were you _thinking_ –“

But Peter, face crushed to his grandpa’s shoulder, wasn’t concerned with himself. He blinked away the tears. Rubbed at them, when that didn’t work, and finally settled for sweeping a quaking, gravel-pitted hand across his eyes until they were clear enough to see through.

“The man,” he whispered. “The man on the bike –“

Grandpa’s breath shuddered in his throat. He unpeeled himself from around Peter, and led him to the verge before pushing him to kneel. “Stay,” he said firmly. Then, as an afterthought – “And Peter? Don’t look.”

He couldn’t change the past though. Peter’d already seen – and the image of the bike, wrapped ergonomically around a splintered tree-trunk, seemed in similarly sharp relief whether or not he shut his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Next time, he hit the fucking kid.

Nothing ruined a nice, straight run like having to slam your brakes to avoid some dumb dipshit with a deathwish. It got worse when your chopper bucked you off and went spinning into the forestline, leaving you with a whole sudo-cream’s tub worth of road rash and an arm bent in a new and exciting direction.

Not to mention a repair cost that made his head hurt just thinking about it. He’d only repainted last week, for fuck’s sake.

Yondu tried to voice some of this. The results were not conductive to interpretation.

“Can you hear me?” Yondu cracked an eye, and found it full of the blazing sun. A shadow fell across his face. He squinted at the old dude casting it, his weathered face pinched with fear. “You’re awake. Thank god. But you’re hurt mighty bad, son. I’ll run back to the house, call for an ambulance –“

No.

Fuck, if the police caught up with him now…

Yondu, moving on adrenaline, latched his good hand onto the old guy’s trouserleg. It left a nasty blood-smear, but it got his attention – thank fuck. His grazed skin felt like it’d been doused in gasoline, and Yondu doubted he had the strength to try twice.

“No… ho’pit’al…” he managed, spitting out the syllables one by one when his brain refused to string an entire sentence together.

The old guy frowned. “Son, I don’t think you gotta choice –“

Yondu shook his head hard enough to make blood fly from the corners of his mouth. “No hospital!” Hands grabbed his shoulders. They tried to restrain him without agitating his injuries – which only made Yondu thrash harder.

“You’re injuring yourself; you oughta stay still –“

“No hospital!”

“Okay, okay!” Relenting, the man stood. He bent double, panting, resting hands on his knees. “No hospital. I’ve gotta go fetch the car – I’ll bring you to my house, see if my wife can patch you up. We’ve got a landline, so once you’re less out-of-it you can make a wiser decision.”

Yondu snorted. What did he care if some decrepit git didn’t approve of his life choices? This was his fault anyway: should’ve been watching the boy more. Speaking of…

“Kid,” he croaked, fists curling weakly against the red-slimed tarmac. “He alright?”

There followed a pause. It couldn’t have dragged for more than a second, but every instant felt like an hour when half your back had been flayed by road-grit. Yondu could’ve sworn his heart stopped then, at the mere thought. What if he hadn’t been fast enough? What if he’d clipped the boy? If he had the balance to sit, would he spy another body further off, in even worse condition...?

Then the old man exhaled, heavy and long. “Peter’s fine. He’ll be staying with you, in fact – just until I bring the car round. Won’t you, Pete?”

“You told me not to look,” squeaked a lil’ voice from somewhere past Yondu’s field of vision. A small, freckled, wedge-shaped face appeared, bobbing about his peripherals. Peter didn’t seemed fazed to break his grandpa’s rule. Yondu liked him already. “Oh. That’s gross. Your arm’s on backwards.”

Yondu couldn’t help it. He grinned. “Usual response… t’someone… savin’ yer life… is ‘thank you’…”

“I’d better head…” The old man cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, even as he ambled into the woods at a slovenly jog. “Sir, keep an eye on my grandson. And Peter?”

“Yessir?”

“Keep him talking.”

Great. Yondu wriggled his toes, relieved he could move them. Fuck knew how long it’d take the old fella to retrieve his vehicle at that pace. The next coupla hours, stuck on a hot dirty road with every nerve ending ablaze, weren’t looking to be his funnest. And heck – this couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Given all that was going down in the city at the moment, leadership among the Ravagers gang was more heavily contested than ever. Taserface – the big fry-faced jackass – had been eyeing up his spot. An injury of this magnitude was the perfect excuse for him to snatch it. Or worse – off him completely.

Nah, Yondu told himself, flopping a hand over his eyes in feeble protection from the sun. Taserface wouldn’t do that. Not if he wanted to start his tenure with the Ravagers’ respect intact. But if a rival gang got wind that Yondu was outside his home territory, banged up and vulnerable…

Shit, this could be bad. Laying low with some nobody-family might actually be his best bet to stay alive.

The burning light on his cheek waned for the second time in as many minutes. This time when Yondu opened his eyes, wheezing in pain, he found that curious little face from before. “Don’t’chu move,” he croaked. “Thas’ good right there.”

“Okay.” Peter shifted from foot to foot, careful to keep his shoulders between the injured biker and the sizzling rays. Grandpa had told him to keep him talking, but for once in his life, Peter couldn’t think of anything to say. The man looked broken, like a dropped puppet. His sleeveless leather jacket and jeans were in shreds, as was the skin beneath: all glossy crimson streaks and crumpled blue-white tissue. Staring at him hurt, but Peter couldn’t tear his eyes away. If he’d only looked before he’d crossed… Then the biker would’ve sailed on by and Peter wouldn’t have another death on his conscience.

The biker shifted. Froze, and groaned. His eyes shot wide as something in his mangled arm went _pop._

Peter shuddered. He felt more moisture on his cheeks – a delayed reaction, offset by shock. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Aw. Always figured I’d have a pretty lady cryin’ over me when my time came knockin’.” His voice was cloudy, agonized. When he coughed, blood dribbled down his stubbled chin. Peter didn’t understand how his body could produce so much of it. He dropped his gaze, feeling queasy – and frowned when it alighted on the Walkman strapped to his belt. Should he…? He brushed the buttons with a trembling thumb. Wondering, considering…

Mom had given him this tapedeck. It was something for him and her, something to be shared in those delicate, private moments when they lay curled together on her sweat-hot bed. Not for grizzly bikers who’d met their comeuppance for speeding on a long straight road.

But the songs always comforted Peter when he was sad. Perhaps they’d help the biker too?

The imprint of the tarmac on his palms smarted as he unclipped the device. But Peter knew it was nothing compared to what the biker was going through. He knelt besides him, taking care to position himself so his shadow still fell square on his face, and gently manipulated the headphones around his shaved, bruised skull.

“Do you like music?” he asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Leave me commentsssss, precious**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which Wade hunts frogs, Peter takes a dip, and Yondu plots.**

Smushing frogs took effort, moreso than one inexperienced in the art might expect. Toads? Toads were a different kettle of amphibian. They chilled in the shady, mossy parts of the forest, scarcely discernible from the warts that tumored the roots on the ash trees. Heck, sticks weren’t even needed! You could step on ‘em. Gentle at first, but with ever-increasing pressure, until – _spltch!_ The rubbery green sack burst open, pink squidge and guts laid bare for the summer flies.

But frogs were nippy little buggers. Killing them took _skill_. Wade Wilson, eminent toad-stomper, decided it was high time he graduated.

Pond weed hung in the stagnant depths, like cobwebs in the dilapidated barn Wade currently called home. Tadpole season had long since passed. That was Wade’s favorite time of the year, when the winter coolness ceded to summery roast across the space of a single week, and the midges clotted the air, thick as the stormclouds above. Today was clear though. Clear, sunny, the day after a rare heavy rainfall… Perfect for stalking prey of the web-toed variety.

Wade hopped around the pond, bare feet skidding on stone. He’d left his flipflops on a boulder overlooking the creek. Their tattered red straps were translucent, in a plastic-y sort of way, and the sunbeams in the clearing lit them bright as a strawberry boiled sweet. If he forgot where he left them, he did have more. But they were in his room, back in the dingy, booze-smelling apartment he’d left three days before. Fetching them meant waking the Dragon.

Wade was no Daenerys. He couldn’t risk that.

Wade sneered at the pond skaters as they skittered across the algae-thick surface. He stirred it with his stick, shredding that trim green carpet. Soupy water slopped his toes. Bubbles streamed to the surface, shaken loose by the agitation. There was one square meter where algae didn’t blot the light: a narrow, teeming column, into which all aquatic life that had once filled this pool was now compressed. There’d be frogs there. But if Wade jumped in, he’d either have to sleep in wet clothes or sneak home to shower and change.

Only one thing for it. Wade huddled into the slope of the bank, hidden from the overgrown jogging track besides. He smacked his stick into his palm, relishing the sharp crack, and settled in to wait.

 

* * *

 

“Sweet Jesus!” Grandma, who’d opened the porch door at Peter’s feeble knock, goggled as if it was the man himself. “What on earth happened to you?”

“Walked the wood path on the way home,” Peter muttered. He dug a finger in his ear. Winced, and pulled out algae. “Met Wade.”

“Oh – look at your shirt! It’s ruined!”

Peter shrugged. “Never liked it much anyways.” That earned a wounded gasp. Grandma’s pruney mouth puckered like a cat’s bottom.

“Peter! We brought you that shirt for your birthday.”

“Yeah, shirts. Just what every boy my age wants.”

“Be grateful! Some boys have a lot less!” Huffing, grandma made to straighten his collar – before remembering she’d already deemed the sodden, slimy material unsalvageable. She halted with a good inch to spare. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about her spitting on her thumb and rubbing his cheek; that was worth the occasional impromptu pond-bath. “Ugh. That Wilson is a public menace. You stay right there, mister – don’t think about setting one foot on my clean floorboards! I’ll tell Jim to come around with the hosepipe.”

And with that, the door creaked shut: a whitewashed wooden portcullis lowered between Peter and his prize.

Dammit. If he knew more swearwords, now would be an excellent time to use them.

‘Public menace’ really gave Wade far too much credit. He was a threat only to what little excitement Peter could glean from a world that’d seen fit to steal his mom early. Excitement like the mystery-man passed out on his bed: arm splinted best as Martha Quill’s doctoring skills could manage, and sheets pooled around his waist to preserve modesty while avoiding the worst of the road rash. Peter had helped his granddad carry him up the stairs – which meant hopping about, getting underfoot, and almost sending the three of them tumbling on top of grandma, who’d alternated between wringing her hands and loudly informing her husband that this was an awful idea.

“It’ll be worse if I drop him an’ he dies,” Jim Quill had huffed, glaring at a sheepish Peter. “Then we’ll be done for manslaughter.”

Grandma gasped. “Jim! Not in front of Peter!”

As if he didn’t know what death was. Skulking out of grandpa’s path, Peter had stuck his little legs through the banister. He sat with feet kicking as grandpa hoisted the biker up the final step. He’d hooked him under the armpits after deeming him too heavy to put in a fireman’s lift. “Not at my age,” had been his gruff answer when Peter suggested it – but he’d done a mighty fine job of bundling him this far. Peter was impressed. Less so when grandpa dragged him towards his room.

“Hey! Whatcha doing?”

I’ll find the spare mattress in the attic tomorrow,” grandpa puffed. “Put it on the floor by Merry. For now, we pile up quilts from the linen cupboard. Make you a nice lil’ nest.” Grandma choked out a noise at the thought of her daughter within six foot of a skinhead. Then a still more strangled one.

“Jim! You can’t expect Peter to sleep in there! With… with him!”

“He takes his bed or ours. Your choice, Martha.”

Funnily, grandma stopped complaining after that.

 

* * *

 

Grandpa’s hosedowns were always thorough. Peter was just glad he hadn’t been ordered to strip to his underwear and shiver in the middle of the lawn, like the last time Wade’d accosted him near mud. Grandpa just sluiced away the worst of the gunk. He cranked the faucet off at the wall, holding the nozzle over Peter’s head and shaking out the final chilly trickles.

“There,” he said, not without fondness. He replaced the dripping hose-head with a towel.

Scrumpling his hair, Peter trudged from the wet circle. Droplets glistened dewlike on dry summer grass. Water slopped in his shoes, and at grandpa’s direction Peter toed them off before stretching out in the sun to dry. “So?” he called, as the man began his steady trudge for the house. “How is he?”

He didn’t have to elaborate. Grandpa knew who he was talking about. He scouted for eavesdropping neighbours in a way he probably thought was inconspicuous. Luckily, none were discovered. No men with rifles stomped from the woods. No doors clattered open to reveal glaring housewifes – which in Peter’s opinion, honed from a childhood of playing knock-and-run, were far more dangerous. A faraway lawnmower chugged at the low cusp of the audial range. Its burbling engine smoothed the chirping crickets, the rustling woodland, the thrum of tyres on the road, into a soporific, hypnotic drone.

The only disturbance came from the house across the street, where curtains in an upstairs window twitched. The house belonged to the Summers family – the patriarch of whom worked for the police, and (it was rumoured) had never been seen without his dark red sunglasses. But Peter knew the offending room belonged to the son, not the cop. He didn’t pay it any mind.

Meanwhile, grandpa stalked across and hauled him to his feet. He steered him towards the porch despite Peter’s protests that he had yet to dry, eyebrows carving deep furrows into his forehead. “We don’t talk about that outside,” was all he said.

 

* * *

 

Getting five-eight of leather, blood, and muscle into an immaculate semi-detached house without attracting attention had been like convincing their neighbors that the ‘spaceship’ Peter constructed out of junkyard scrap in their front yard was beneficial to the local ambience. This was made worse by Peter’s enthusiasm, as well as the biker’s moans, which increased in volume every time he was jostled. Not to mention grandma.

When grandpa had first opened the car door and revealed the spoils of their hunt, grandma did what grandmas did best (after turning pale, clasping her saggy chest, and leaning on the bonnet as if her legs had turned to blancmange). She started hypothesizing.

The biker was no man. Or at least, no decent one. He was a hoodlum on the run. A gang boss. A serial killer who lured in gullible and sympathetic families before stealing their kitchen knives and butchering them in the night. They shouldn’t be putting him up – oh no! She ought to call 911 this very instant, and not for an ambulance!

Grandpa, with the confidence of one married for forty-plus years, unpeeled the biker from the seat and ignored her. “Open the door, Petey,” he hissed. “And if you see them Summerses coming out for an eyeful, you holler real loud, y’hear?”

Disappointed at being relegated to guard duty, Peter sat on the porch with his chin in his hands. He glowered at the dull headlamps of the Summers’ police cruiser until their biker – _his_ biker – was safely stowed.

After that, it’d been the trek up the stairs, the debate over sleeping arrangements, and the slapshod treatment of the biker’s wounds. Grandma had suggested over dinner that they respect their absent family member’s need for rest, and tell her of the houseguest come morning. Peter had been looking forwards to sharing his side of the story – embellished with gunfights, sirens, and the occasional UFO. But he supposed keeping a secret was exciting enough.

He’d scarcely slept that night, entranced by the slow suck and blow of the biker’s unconscious breaths. When he noticed they were lagging, scratchy and pained, he slipped the headphones off his ears and donated them once more. The biker’s eyes had snapped open. Blearily scoping the room, he’d said his first words to Peter since passing out to _Escape_ on the blazing hot highway.

“I hate this song. You got any CCR?”

Peter hadn’t. He made to retrieve the headphones, but a hand on his wrist prevented him. The biker’s skin felt clammy. It narrated the imprint of various chopper handlebars and gun grips, compounded into callouses over several years like sediment in fossils.

“Don’t hate it _that_ much,” he grunted. And, before Peter could begin his interrogation – Who was he? Where did he come from? Why’d he been hightailing it down that road like a bat outta hell was hot on his heels? – promptly started to snore.

 

* * *

 

Now, released from pond-drenched quarantine, Peter set to satisfying his curiosity. He bounded up the stairs two at a time – then slowed to a tiptoe when grandma squawked that he’d wake his mother. The stairwell bowed and creaked under anything heavier than a toddler. But Peter had lived here long enough to avoid the felonious parts. He crept along the upstairs hallway, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

 

* * *

 

When he was allowed to see mom – to perch straight-backed on the edge of her bed and regale her with a rehearsed story of his day at school, under grandma’s watchful glare – she made an effort to sit. She pressed her bony ribcage to the headboard and inched upright, shaking her head at grandma’s offered hand. Peter wasn’t allowed to see this part, of course. But he knew it occurred. When he peeped through the keyhole on his way up to bed, knocking twice before delivering a soft ‘goodnight’, mom would be flat out, staring at the ceiling as if she could see through it to the stars beyond. She would start at his voice and make to sit again. Depending on whether she failed or succeeded, her next words would be a reedy croak of “Come give me a kiss,” or a low “Night, Peter,” laced with loathing at her own weakness.

She didn’t want Peter to see her like that. Peter didn’t care whether she was prone or otherwise – but the one time he ignored the implicit dismissal, mom had accepted his kiss with such sad eyes Peter vowed to never do so again.

The biker didn’t share her shame. When Peter walked in, he was collapsed on his front. The gravel-pitted rawhide of his back had been washed, tweezered, dried, and daubed in an old family salve – all courtesy of grandpa. Grandma refused to come within a foot of the man. And, forgetting that Peter had already borne witness to the tangle of skin and grit that’d once been a shoulder, a trapezius, and a pair of latissimus dorsi, grandpa had banished him from the operating theatre too.

Peter sniffed. It smelt like aloe and chamomile, mixed with alcohol. A lot of alcohol.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” he asked. The biker twitched, snapped from his doze. He tried to push up, forgetting one arm was aligned only with the aid of three thick sticks sawn from the apple tree in the Quills’ back yard.

“Does now,” he said, after collapsing once more. His face waxed wheyish with pain. “Thanks, kid.”

Peter scoffed and crossed his arms. “You did that to yourself!”

If the man’s shoulder joint had the rotational capacity to mimic him, he’d be doing so. He made do with shifting until Peter had an unobstructed view of his glare. Peter turned bright pink as the sheets slid, revealing that the friction burn on his back spread further than he’d thought. Catching his expression, the biker snorted a laugh. “Yeah. I ain’t gonna be sitting for some time. Y’know, usually when I say that to a guy –“ He cut himself off. Readjusted the sheet, wincing as it scraped tender flesh. “Uh, kid?”

Peter glanced up. “Yes?”

“You wanna be useful?”

On the offchance grandma had been right, Peter eyed the open doorway. “I’m not fetching you a knife.”

“A knife? Why’d I want a – no. Kid, look. This is getting mighty sore. I kinda… I need a lil’ something to take the edge off, y’get me?”

Peter nodded sagely. “Paracetamol.”

That won another laugh, just as ugly but more genuine. “M’fraid I’m a bit beyond that. I’m… I’m guessin’ you didn’t take the panniers off my bike?” Peter shook his head. “Course not. Fuck. Uh, I mean, um, _heck_.” Well, if Peter hadn’t been determined to like the guy, that sealed the deal. Grandpa _never_ used language like that. The biker massaged his grazed temple, either staving off a headache or in deep thought. “Alright kid. How long’s it take the police to get to a crash site around these parts. We talking hours, days, weeks…?”

“Depends on how far away it is,” said Peter, proud to have an answer. “For yours, I reckon days. Weren’t the most popular neck of the woods, that.”

“Right.” For some reason, that made the biker relax. He rolled onto his side, careful to keep his gammy arm from jarring. Sweat glued his cheek to the pillowcase. For a moment, Peter expected him to fall asleep again. It didn’t happen. Instead he looked at Peter – actually _looked_ at him, the way adults never did unless they were about to launch into a lecture. Unsure what he’d done wrong, Peter nibbled his lip. But the man made an effort to look friendly. He coaxed his grizzled grimace into something approaching a smile. “What’s yer name, kiddo?”

Another question he could answer! “Peter. What’s yours?”

“Les not worry ‘bout that just yet.”

Peter pouted. “I told you mine…” There was a brief silence. Then the biker exhaled noisily, and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. It was such an exaggerated motion Peter couldn’t help but giggle. “That’s not a name.”

“Har-de-fu – uh, _hecking_ , har-har. It’s Yondu Udonta.”

Peter tested the syllables. “That’s a weird name.”

“Tell me about it. Now Peter, we’re friends, right? I mean, ya kinda landed me in this mess, what with walking out in the road an’ all, so I figure you owe me. Wouldya say that’s fair?”

Well, when he put it like that… Ashamed, Peter studied his toes. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to.”

“Hey, don’tchu get all mopey! I’m givin’ ya a chance to redeem yerself! That sound good?” It did. Peter nodded. The biker’s beam lit his face like a bonfire on Mardi Gras. For a moment Peter forgot the flayed and gummy meat facing the wall: the wound he’d caused, no matter how inadvertently. Thank God Yondu was the forgiving type. “Great! I knew ya were a good kid. You an’ me, Petey? We’re gonna get along.”

Bloodshot eyes swept him head to foot. Peter made himself as tall as he could, wanting to prove the scrutiny worth Yondu’s effort. When that fierce grin wavered, his own did too, and he tucked his chin to his chest, shrinking into himself. “What?”

“You look kinda damp.”

Oh, that. Boys who were friends with bikers didn’t get pushed into ponds by the school bully. Peter withered further. “I, uh. Went for a swim.”

“With all your clothes on?” Yondu smiled again. Well. It was more of a smirk. And, Peter suspected, entirely at his expense. He turned for the door. “Aw, c’mon. I’m just teasin’!”

Peter had had enough teasing for an entire lifetime. Perhaps grandma was right, and this _was_ a terrible idea. Glaring at Yondu, he stormed for the stairs and slammed the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

Fuck.

Fuck him and his big mouth. He _needed_ that kid, dammit. Certainly, he doubted the old man and that honking goose of a wife’d be willing to dig through his panniers and extract all evidence relating to the drug samples he’d been couriering to Atlanta. They wouldn’t even bring him enough nose candy that he could pretend he was the King of fucking Sheba until the police arrived.

Yondu thumped his head on the pillow. Groaned, as the wet mass of muscle he’d once called a back went into spasms. He considered his next avenue. If he pretended to have second thoughts about the hospital, would they let him use the landline? He could call Kraglin. Or Czar – or even Isla. Ditzy the girl might be, but she was a dab hand at erasing anything incriminating. Often with aid of gasoline and a flamethrower. Selma was only three hours by highway; they could be on the road in minutes…

But what if Taserface got wind of it? And what if he insisted that the Quill family were too dangerous to be left alive?

The Feds wouldn’t ignore the murder of an old boy and his bird in a sleepy roadside suburb; not like they’d ignored the inner city gang members who’d vanished last time Horde-bikers encroached on Ravager turf (or the half-rotted bodies dredged from the storm drain a fortnight later). But with the aid of certain substances, one death could be made to look like natural causes, and the other passed off as suicide…

Throw in a kid, however? Then things got difficult.

But Yondu’s mind buzzed perpetually on a plane of criminality that detectives trained for years to access, in the hopes of entering the heads of their perps. He could picture the story the Ravagers would spin as if he were reading it in the headlines. Falsifying a scene was easily done when you had the tools and the know-how. A scribbled note here. A few missing items there. The absence of Peter’s school rucksack and trainers. Everyone’d be combing the woods thinking he’d run away, while he was actually gagged and bound in a trunk halfway to Mexico.

Yondu glowered at his broken arm. It hung stiff and diagonal across his belly. He tried to ease his fingers into a fist, but agony flared between the splintered ulna and radius, a carpal tunnel of fire.

Bad shit happened to people who got in his way, kids or otherwise. Peter’d better come round quick, before the easy solution became too tempting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Lol what's editing**
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> **Please leave me comments! I read every one.**
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> ****


	3. Chapter 3

“So,” said Meredith. “Who is he?”

Peter, not yet authorized to let cats out of bags – let alone cats of the asshole-biker variety – bit his cheek. The squat clock on the mantelpiece proclaimed he had an hour before registration. The walk took ten minutes if he went via the streets – no woodland path, not today. The threat of a lurking, crazy-eyed Wade outweighed that of the pitying Marmington polis. Peter would run the gauntlet of smiles and headpats and _how’s your mother doing?_ when the time came.

For now though, there was peace. He perched on the edge of mom’s bed, trainers kicking inches above the floorboards. No carpet – not when it was liable to get puked on. Everything was clean and bright, like it always was after grandma breezed through. It felt artificial, unreal, a curtain pulled across a painful truth…

But mom was awake, mom was talking, and for the next fifty minutes Peter had mom all to himself. He twiddled his thumbs and strove to look innocent. “Who is who?”

Mom’s weak smile grew. “The man who’s gonna murder us all in our sleep, according to grandma.” Ah. She’d heard that. Peter shrugged.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Grandma was hollering at the TV.”

Mom flicked his nose – Peter bending to enable the chastisement. “You little monkey! Don’t give me that!” She smiled as she said it though. Peter couldn’t help but indulge her.

“You won’t tell grandma I told you?”

Mom raised a skeletal pinky finger. Peter eagerly wrapped it in his own, and – after glancing at the door – regaled her with the events leading up to the crash. Mom bore it all with an impressive pokerface. Until Peter got to the part where Godzilla arrived – at which her lips made that funny little spasm, which meant she was sucking them like a humbug to keep from laughing.

“And what did you say to Godzilla?” she asked, as Peter mimed the monster stalking towards the downed biker, himself a gallant warrior between them. Peter, forgetting his character a moment, shot her a grin.

“I told him that Star Lord would defeat him! Because Star Lord’s the strongest hero ever!”

Mom smiled and beckoned him over for a hug. “Yeah,” she said, burying her nose in his curly red-gold crown. “Yeah, he is.”

 

* * *

 

Those fifty private minutes turned to thirty. Peter would have been peeved, if he wasn’t afraid weekend outdoor privileges would be revoked in punishment for blabbing. Grandma had yet to warm to the biker – “Yondu Udonta,” Peter had proudly proclaimed, but that was such a weird name that she was certain he’d made it up (or worse: he was foreign). The idea that he might share a room with her girl was, in her eyes, preposterous. Who knew what he would do? Why (and this in a hissed undertone) he might _take advantage!_

For some reason, when Peter asked why she was whispering, her mouth snapped closed.

Meredith was the one to reassure her, after grandpa’s efforts failed. “C’mon, mom.” She clasped the nearest wrinkled hand. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. He’s hardly going to be up to causing… trouble. And anyway, it gets mighty dull in here. I could use some company.”

Grandma’s lips formed their usual displeased pucker. “A biker is not _company_ , Merry! He’s an awful influence. Heaven knows what nonsense he’s been filling Peter’s head with –“

The last time they’d talked had ended in Peter being reminded of his demeaning trip to the bottom of a woodland pond (Yondu had passed out long before Peter sulkily cracked open the door that night). Despite this, Peter felt the urge to defend him. “He ain’t so bad!”

Grandma’s knees went weak. She rested on Merry’s bed until the joints ceased their gelatin-impression. “See! He says ‘ain’t’! It’s despicable, Merry, despicable. Such language in a young boy! I told Jim we ought to have taken him to a hospital, let the police handle his sort–“

Jim, hauling the fold-up bed through the narrow doorway, met Meredith’s eyes long enough to share a roll.

Meredith beamed at him. “What do you think, dad?”

“I think a man has many reasons not to want to go to a hospital.” Jim glanced at Peter, banging his heels on the bedpost. He decided against elaborating. “However, he’s not a bad man. He could’ve killed himself, diving off that bike to avoid Peter. Anyone who’d give their life for my grandson is welcome under my roof.”

Meredith nodded. She gave grandma’s arm a comforting pat. “Well, I’m convinced. And I want to thank him properly. Peter, did you say thank you?”

Huffing, Peter booted at the bedpost as if he was looking to tunnel through it. He stopped when grandma made that warning cluck, the one perfected by all women over fifty, which translated to _stop that right now young man or I’ll twist your ear._ “He’s rude, mom. Don’t gotta say ‘thank you’ to rude people.”

Meredith emulated her mother. Being only thirty, her tut was as-of-yet unpracticed, but she did her best. “You do when they save your life.”

“But _mooooom_ –“

“But nothing.” She turned to grandpa, smile sweet. “Thank you for bringing the bed down. You can fetch him whenever.”

Grandpa popped the catch holding the two halves of the mattress together and caught it before it crashed to the floor, guiding it gently horizontal. “Right you are, Merry.” But he had to bend over and wheeze for a moment, hands on his knees as he caught his breath. Merry’s smile flip-flopped to its reverse.

“Dad? Is your back okay?”

“Fine, fine…” Grandpa waved her off. Meredith looked anything but convinced, but she knew arguing would get her nowhere. Luckily, being an only daughter had taught her how to handle her stubborn parents. She nudged Peter with her foot.

“Darling, why don’t you go bring your new friend while me and grandpa chat? Can he walk?”

“One way to find out.” Grandpa sighed, ruffling Peter’s hair as he darted past. “Call me if you need a hand.”

 

* * *

 

The biker lay on his front. He was still. So still that Peter, unconsciously channelling grandma, watched for the faint swell and collapse of his ribs before approaching.

He cocked his head at the weird gloop gluing Yondu’s flesh in some semblance of togetherness; skin strips flagellated by road grit lay smooth under the sap-like salve. That ointment had been smeared over grazed knees and papercuts after each of Peter’s childhood misadventures. Seeing so much of it on a single body was odd, like Yondu was more dressing than man. Peter’d never imagined it could be used for proper wounds – although then again, he’d never imagined that a biker might come crashing into their lives at eighty kilometres per hour. It slathered Yondu like chunky marmalade, the alcohol-reek pungent even from the other side of the room. None of the gauze pads in grandma’s emergency box were large enough to cover it, but grandpa had promised to get a bandage reel from the pharmacy.

(Unbeknownst to Peter, when Yondu’s eyes had widened and he’d flailed upright, Jim Quill had pushed him belly down on the pallet as firmly as he dared. He’d reassured him in a low monotone that anyone nosy enough to care would be spun a red-herring: Martha fretting about hunting accidents, better to be safe than sorry, yada yada yada. No need for anyone to know he was here, right? Wouldn’t want the neighbours interrupting his recovery to goggle at the stranger.)

Once convinced he wasn’t a corpse, Peter padded closer. He flinched when Yondu dragged his head around to grin at him.

“Mornin’ squirt,” he croaked. “I gotta pee something awful.”

Last night grandpa had helped him to the bathroom. Peter, assessing Yondu’s condition with the confidence of an eight-year-old doctor (graduated with full honors from a playground game of hospital) decided he looked fine and dandy, easily capable of a ten-meter shuffle down the hall. “First room on your left,” he chirped.

There followed a somewhat incredulous silence. Peter made the most of it, rocking onto his toes and hummed the opening bars to _Want You Back._

That cut off when Yondu laughed. The noise croaked out of his throat like a bullfrog call, becoming abruptly more strangled as the sheet dragged on his abraded thighs. He flopped his good hand over his forehead. “As in, ya might wanna find me a bottle before I make yer bed a whole wetter.”

Peter paled. “You wouldn’t!”

“Ain’t gonna have much choice if ya don’t hurry.” Yondu wriggled his toes, which poked out over the base of the mattress. “Shame. You got a nice duvet.”

Mom had knitted it, before the medication made her too drowsy to complete the task. She was still working on the pillowcase, but while she was determined, grandma had taken Peter aside and quietly informed him not to expect his matching set until Christmas. The thought that it could be defiled in such a manner was ghastly. Peter goggled at him a moment longer – a moment during which Yondu’s smirk edged ever-more wicked. Then he sprang for the door and bounded down the stairs to the kitchen, spotting a milk bottle propped empty in the open window.

“What’re you up to, Pete?” called grandma as he sprinted past, prize in hand.

“Nothing!”

 

* * *

 

Trouble came when Yondu’s first attempt to sit led to him clipping his arm the windowsill. He made a horrible noise – half furious, all agonized. Peter darted into assist, terrified that unconsciousness would bring about a lack of bladder control. Yondu’s snarl would’ve given Peter similar problems in that regard – if the biker wasn’t bowed over himself, gasping, moisture clinging to the corners of his eyes.

Peter set his jaw. He tried to grab the biker under his arm, heave him to sit. Yondu recognized mutiny when he saw it. He leaned as close as he could, practising the demented glare that’d kept his Ravagers in line since he’d first taken the helm in a blaze of gunfire half a decade ago.

“I don’t need your help.”

“Yes you do.” Peter stubbornly yanked his wrist, levering him upright with bodyweight alone. Exasperation swelled when, rather than taking the offered bottle, Yondu stared at the small fingers compressing his wristbones, no way near large enough to wrap around them. He jerked away as if burnt.

“Enough with the babyin’. Coulda done it alone, if you’d given me time.”

Well, that was a crock of bullshit. Only he couldn’t say that out loud, because noise travelled easily between the Quill house’s airy rooms, and _bullshit_ wasn’t a word Peter officially knew.

Despite his snapping, when Yondu rearranged – trying to get his thighs under him in a way that wouldn’t tenderize the fresh-swabbed rawness of his ass – his eyes went wide and his cheeks sucked in. Peter’d never seen that expression on an adult. Only on the children who attended the kindergarten besides Sunnyside Elementary, the ones who had yet to complete their potty training.

No more time to waste. Peter shoved the milk bottle in Yondu’s face, crossed his arms, and pointedly turned away.

 

* * *

 

After disposing of the bottle – that too had been eventful, scattered with loud proclamations of “Ew! I don’t wanna touch it!” and “What the hell’m _I_ supposed to do with it then, kid? Toss it out the window?” – Peter chanced to glance at his alarm clock: the blue-painted twin-belled monstrosity that he’d left by Yondu’s pillow. It wasn’t there any longer. A brief scramble under the bed revealed it, front panel cracked and streaky with dust (Yondu looked sheepish, but refused to apologize. Peter expected nothing less.) He blew the grime away – and gasped.

“I’m gonna be late!” He scrambled for the stairs.

Yondu sprawled stomach-down once more (the position being significantly more comfortable now it didn’t feel like he had a lead ball being lowered in his bladder). He hollered after him: “Kid, wait! I still gotta talk to you about…” _That damn wrecksite, which’s harbouring enough meth to kill a herd of elephants._ The door slammed before he could finish.

Yondu bashed his head on the nearest surface. Given that was a pillow, this had little effect. “Dammit.”

Time passed slowly when you were incapacitated. Slower still when all that stood between you and another jail sentence was a dippy eight-year-old. It wasn’t that Yondu couldn’t handle himself in prison – he could – or that he was worried about what might become of his boys if he was out of commission for a coupla years. They were smart cookies, the Ravagers. Wouldn’t be able to keep their current spot at the top of the gang pyramid without him at their head, but they’d maintain a decent rep until he could be bailed or busted out. The problem was that Yondu didn’t _want_ another stint in the slammer. He was nearly thirty, for chrissake. He’d already bounced in and out from behind bars enough to make a yoyo nauseous; been there, done that, got the postcard. It had taught him three things. They were, in ascending order: that riding dick was mighty fun but if you didn’t wanna get shoved around you kept that to yourself, that prison food was shit but not half as bad as Shorro’s cooking back at the Ravager club-base, and that Yondu Udonta fucking loved freedom.

He wasn’t made for cages, dammit. He certainly wasn’t made for lounging in beds on hot summer days when by all rights he oughta be out there, gutting Hordesmen, smuggling weapons to the crime families and taking his city by storm. Even the view from the window felt unbearably stifling: a neat street of houses on the forest edge, each detached and well-sized with a perfect postage stamp of front lawn and a wider expanse round the back. This place hadn’t seen a decent shoot-out since the cowboy age. Yondu’d never felt so out of element, and it didn’t help knowing he couldn’t leave.

Heck. He was helpless. He’d needed a schoolboy to drag him upright so he could piss. If that wasn’t a summation of how low he’d fallen, Yondu didn’t know what was; had his injuries been any worse he’d have requested a mercy-kill.

Scoffing, he twisted his head to the other side, easing the tension in his neck. No. He’d recover. He’d recover, and he’d fix his bike, and he’d sail away from this crummy southern idyll, a one-fingered salute bidding it farewell. For now, he just had to focus on the first part.

When the door creaked open, his first assumption was that the kid had returned. “Forget yer satchel?” he croaked. The heaviness of the next step decimated that theory. Grown man. Yondu almost reached for a gun, before he remembered that Peter had a grandfather – and that his pistol was distributed along a hundred meters of road.

Hoping he hadn’t noticed, Yondu made his shoulders relax. He pretended not to notice the sting, as muscle shifted under shredded flesh. “Mornin’ sir,” he drawled. “Interrogation time?” To be honest, he was amazed it hadn’t occurred already. But the older man – Jim Quill, was it? – shook his grey head.

“Moving you downstairs. Peter said you weren’t up for much walking, but it’ll be easier to look after you both in the same room.”

The thought of another deathmarch through the Quill family abode made Yondu’s back seize. Even struggling to the bathroom last night had made him wish for the sweet fiery comforts of hell – or better yet: a line of coke the length of his forearm. He grimaced. “Do we gotta?” Then blinked as the last part of Quill senior’s speech sunk in. “Uh. Whaddaya mean, ‘you both’?”

Jim examined his dressing. His broad, simple face hovered over Yondu like a moon in orbit – the ‘orbit’ part due to how his vision had gone all swimmy with pain, as Jim prodded the herbal gunk holding him together. He couldn’t tell if he was smiling or otherwise. But his voice was warm.

“My daughter, Merry.”

“P-Peter’s mom?” The stutter wasn’t intentional. But given Jim had ceased his gentle attempts to unstick the sheet from his thighs and ripped it off like a bandaid – waxing any remaining skin from his buttocks in the process – hiding pain was the last thing on Yondu’s mind.

“That’s right.” Jim assessed the blood-stained sheet. Rather than folding it over Peter’s duvet, which lay bundled around Yondu’s ankles – out of range of any bodily fluids, because something told Yondu he’d never win Peter over if it got damaged – he tugged it loose and tossed it through the open hall doorway, in the vague direction of the washing basket. “I’d tell you more about her, but knowing my Merry, she’ll want to make her introduction in person.”

Great. Another uptight cunt. From what snippets Yondu’d heard from Peter’s grandma – most revolving around his untrustworthiness (correct), the danger he posed to them (also correct), and the unhygienic grottiness of his person (frankly offensive; what did she expect from a biker?) – he’d decided they weren’t going to get along. If this _Merry_ took after her… Fuck his blistered back and broken arm, fuck all hopes of having Peter stow his stash; Yondu’d strangle her before the day was through.

Groaning, he wriggled to kneel on the bed. He slapped away Jim’s offer of assistance. Unlike Peter, Jim didn’t push it. Yondu wasn’t sure if he was grateful for that. It meant he had to struggle to his feet on his lonesome – at which point Jim had no choice but to grab him, if only so he didn’t fall over again. “You alright?” Like everything else about this family, the query sounded disgustingly genuine. As if Jim was concerned for his wellbeing. Yondu, panting with one arm slung across Jim’s shoulders, nodded until the blare from his exposed nerve endings dropped from _Guantanamo_ to _tolerable_.

“Les’ get this over with,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hubba hub hub like NOTHING happens in this chapter ugh**
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> **There'll be more plot-related stuff in the next one. I do have big, big plans for this series. Unfortunately, I'm also dead-of-stress. But hey. I'm trying. :')**
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	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which we meet Nathan, Yondu and Merry fight, and an agreement is reached.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **It's been so lonnngggg. I missed this fic.**

_Meredith._

The sorta name Yondu expected to come attached to a preacher’s daughter: a honey who wouldn’t open her legs for no one but Jesus. Given the gaunt bald woman on the bed opposite had birthed a child out of wedlock, and was currently regaling him with a run-down of her favorite herb-smoking foxholes from the days she was capable of roaming the Georgia woods with her hippie friends, the name seemed ill-fitting.

She asked about Yondu’s name too. Everyone did, so he had his answer ready – “Fuck knows. Given how high mom was, she prob’bly moaned at my old man and he put it on the birth certificate just t’fuck with me. Hey, could be worse. Gotta cousin called Merle – after Merle Oberon, y’know? Just don’t mention her name in his presence or he’ll beat the shit outta ya better than an Imodium–“

Merry’s laugh came as a surprise. A pleasant one. Yondu blinked. “Usually missy, this’s the point where civilized folks tell me to shut my mouth.”

“Well Yondu…” Merry’s eyes crinkled as she snorted the last chuckle into her pillowcase. “I haven’t had anyone to be uncivilized with in a very long time.”

An innuendo lurked in that phrase. Unfortunately, given Merry was in the midst of a slow plod to terminus, and Yondu was skinless from shoulders to knees, neither were in a state to act on it. And there was Meredith’s momma to consider. For all Yondu knew, she loitered outside the door with a shotgun, ready to burst in and start shooting at the first hint of impropriety. He wriggled on his pillow until he faced Merry properly.

Cancer wasn’t pretty. It certainly wasn’t pretty on Peter’s mom, who looked like she’d had the life siphoned out of her through a vacuum cleaner. But still, there was something in her eyes… Spark. Vitality. Despite all odds, Miss Quill here was a fighter. Yondu could respect that – even if her horrendous accent made his teeth grit.

“You’re a yankee, ain’tcha,” he says, cutting to the chase. “Or at least, ya spent so long up North that your voice ain’t come back with ya. You don’t gotta fake it – just speak natural-like.”

Merry’s smile turned whimsical. “Strange, you’d have thought I’d pick it up again right away. Guess it’s not like riding a bike… Although I won’t be doing much of that either.”

Yondu snapped his fingers. “And that’s yer problem! You ain’t never gonna talk proper unless ya get out and meet folks. When’s the last time ya saw someone who weren’t family?”

“At my doctor’s appointment.”

“Don’t count. I’m talking _friends_. You got any of them, girl?”

Merry snorted. “You think my highschool clique wants to see my like this? They’ll come spout niceties at the funeral, I’m sure – but until then, this might as well be a plague house.” Her glare, which had just been edging towards vehement, took a sharp veer for the brighter. “But I’ve got you now! That’s something.”

She sounded so hopeful, big lashless eyes blinking expectantly, waiting for him to spout a bunch of flattering niceties that’d cement their friendship. Yondu snorted and rolled away. “Sorry t’disappoint. But I need some shut-eye.”

God. She’d got that exact puppyish eagerness as Peter. Where the fuck had he landed himself – chipper-house, chipper-ville? Woman was dying of cancer, dammit. Yondu’d been expecting endless laments and dirges; perhaps some pre-emptory funeral bells. Instead, Merry boasted a worse taste in music than _Peter_ , and even frail and feeble, prone in a bed that dwarfed her, her conversation was boundlessly, infuriatingly energetic.

Sure enough, Meredith scowled. “We’ve both been sleeping half the morning anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah woman. Run yer mouth some more. Shit’s like a meditation track – I’ll nod off in no time.”

“Hey! Don’t talk to me like that.” If Meredith had had the strength, she’d have lobbed her water glass at him – or better yet, stomped across the six foot gap between their beds to smack him properly. Firecracker temper on top of natural exuberance. What a shame fate’d picked her name out of the hat and sentenced her to a dull demise. Women like Meredith deserved to go out in a bright burst. In a blaze of gunfire. On the back of a bike.

Yondu yawned. “Too uncivilized for ya, darlin’?”

“Don’t you ‘darling’ me!”

Usually, this was past the point Yondu’d turn to cusses. He never had much patience, less still while staving off agony from his brutalized back. Quill Senior offered him drams of whiskey whenever his face started to noticeably scrunch, but a decade of running with the Ravagers meant Yondu was far from a lightweight. He’d been drinking since he was Peter’s age, and with his tolerance, nothing less than a bottle of hundred-percent-proof moonshine would make a dent in the baseline pain swamping his synapses.

…Or his stash, of course. But Yondu was trying not to think about that.

Anyway, Meredith was fun to tease. Rather than giving into irritation, Yondu settled on a smirk. “Alright honeybunch,” he purred.

When the glass came sailing, he bore the splash with dignity.

 

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When most folks pictured a battleground, they saw scarred and tortured earth, furrowed as if a farmer had been over it with a broken plow. They saw stinking, fly-encrusted bodies and pecking crows. They did not see this: a circle of boys and girls on a hot Georgia playground, soft tarmac sticking to their shoes as they bounced on the balls of their feet and cheered the fighters on.

Today’s gladiators were nothing spectacular. A short and scraggly blonde whose skin was covered in scrapes that far-predated this match, reminiscent of the mangy dogs that meandered in and out of allies, more feral than the foxes. And his opponent: a plump-cheeked ginger boy whose face was of a shade to match his hair. While he was larger, he was obviously less experienced. Most of his fighting strategy seemed to be flailing his arms and roaring, whereas Wade fought dirty: it was only Peter’s reflexes that stopped him clocking kicks to the groin.

“I hate you!” he screamed, although the words were incoherent. He was spitting saliva and blood, a frothy mixture that dribbled pink down his bruised chin. He managed to get a sloppy rope in Wade’s eye, uprooting the dynamics of the battle. As he wrestled Wade onto his back and clambered over him, he slammed his shoulders into the floor hard enough to shake loose whatever brain cells the ragged boy’s skull still harboured.

Wade’s riposte wasn’t physical. Rather he effectively lit Peter’s taper, poured gunpowder into his mouth, and aimed him at the stars with a single word:

“Motherkiller.”

Peter hollered so loud that the flock of pigeons jostling for space along the school's shingles took as one to flight. He drove his fist down, aiming to crush Wade’s nose: pulverize that stupid, gawpy, gap-toothed smirk…

It would’ve gone off without a hitch. Peter’s knuckles would’ve met their mark. His honour would have been avenged. That strange, assured expression in Wade’s eyes – as if he knew he was going to get hit; as if he was _waiting_ for it – would’ve been dashed to smithereens. But for some reason, Peter’s fist remained at the zenith of its swing, immobile.

Spontaneous paralysis? Freeze ray? Peter scanned the sky for aliens, but – much to his disappointment – found no saucers cluttering the horizon.

What then?

The answer revealed itself as Wade looked past him, scowled, and crossed his arms over his reedy chest. “Fuck off, Summers. Stay outta this.”

A heavy sigh. Too heavy for a boy their size – although Summers had already grown well past the five-foot mark and showing no signs of stopping, and thus could hardly be said to fall into that category. “Wade. Stand down.”

“How can I _stand down_ when I’m layin’ flat on my back…”

Peter’s fist strained uselessly in Nathan’s grip. Nathan was two years ahead of him, so one year beyond where Wade would’ve been if he hadn’t flunked every test the teachers threw at him. He was one of those eerily pale boys: hair so blonde it looked white from a distance, as if he had been carved from ice. As the police sergeant’s son, he automatically held a position of respect at Marmington Elementary. It was only bolstered by his stature, his ability to talk to teachers in measured terms as if they were equals, and his impressive stoicism.

That stoicism faded now. Had Peter been watching anything other than Wade’s scowling face – desperate for a chance, any chance, to complete his swing – he would’ve been surprised to find Summers’ lips quirking up.

“Aw,” mocked Wade, crossing his arms. “Have I amused you, Queen Priscilla? Shame we ain’t near a desert. Although none of you’d get that joke anyway, so there’s really no point –“

“No one gets your jokes, Wade.”

“Fuck you too, Priscilla!”

And just like that, Wade’s self-destructive rage latched onto a new opponent. Despite that Peter was between them – perched on top of Wade and pinning the slighter boy to the tarmac, in fact – he had been all but forgotten. Nathan tugged at his arm, gentle but firm.

“Go on,” he said to Peter, nodding for the edge of the playground while Wade ranted at him in his peripherals. “Give my best to your mother.”

Bored schoolchildren deprived of a fight scattered from the circle. Peter, similarly grumpy at the lack of therapeutic violence, wrenched from Nathan’s grip and stormed off. Stupid cool Summers, acting all heroic while he butted into Peter’s affairs. At least he hadn’t demanded gratitude. The words would’ve stuck in Peter’s throat. Peter didn’t care. Let them get on with their lives. He might not have Summers’ chilled-out temperament or Wade’s gift for clowning, but he had one thing neither of the older boys boasted.

He had a biker. Let’s see them top _that_.

 

* * *

 

Enthused by a walk free of dead frogs, ponds, or Wade Wilson, Peter bounced up the stairs and into mom’s room without waiting for grandma. He’d bear her chewing-out later. For now, all he cared about was giving mom her greeting kiss and having an excuse to prod Yondu for more answers.

Where had he come from? What had he been doing, when he nearly mowed Peter down on the lonely interstate road? Did he like it here? How long would he stay?

His curiosity was not to be satisfied. Because Peter scampered through the door, peeping over his shoulder every second step as if dreading the shadow of his grandma falling on him from behind, and found mom laughing. Actually laughing – almost hard enough to rock the bed. Yondu didn’t let Peter’s entrance interrupt him. He kept spinning his yarn (something about meeting a guy called _Kraglin_ , who’d been chased through the grungy Selma back-alleys by a gang of hungry pigeons while struggling to stuff a burger in his mouth.) Peter didn’t believe a word of it. And he wasn’t amused – not at first. Only _his_ stories were allowed to make mom smile.

But then, in a way few pre-pubescent boys managed, Peter took a mental step away from the situation.

Mom didn’t just smile. She _beamed._ It made her sallow cheeks light up. Didn’t put any more color in them, unfortunately, or plump them up any; but it changed _something_ , as if a penny candle had been lit inside. When Yondu deemed that he’d reached a suitable pausing point and turned to face the interruption, he cracked a big grin too, so large Peter felt obliged to join in. “Heya kid. Good run at school?”

“I got in a fight!” Peter blurted. That seemed like the sort of thing you shared with bikers who were staying under your roof. Tragically, it wasn’t the sort of thing you shared with mothers. Meredith gasped and reached out for him, good mood sluicing away faster than stormwater down a drain.

“Peter! What did I tell you about fighting? Was it Wade?”

Yondu shrugged, seemingly preoccupied with rearranging the sticky sheet. His injured arm stuck out at an angle, like he was waving in semaphore. “Didja win?”

Peter, shrinking at the disappointment in mom’s voice, decided to focus on the more encouraging response. “Course I did! I’m Star-Lord!”

“Star-Lord? What kinda dumb pet-name…” Yondu let his sentence trail. After contemplating his unspoken words a moment, he decided against giving them voice. Instead he tucked Peter a nod: small and professional, one man to another. “Good boy,” he said. Peter puffed with pride – then rapidly deflated as mom span on her roommate.

“No, _bad_ boy! I don’t condone violence, Yondu! Certainly not in my son.”

Yondu made a funny expression, leering with half-lidded eyes. “Say what’chu want, sweet-pie. You like a bad boy –“ Meredith’s water glass, retrieved and refilled by the ever-vigilant grandma, sailed the short distance between the beds and emptied itself over Yondu. Again. “Aw, dammit!”

“Peter.” Mom held out her hand. Peter gingerly filled it with his own, half an ear on Yondu, who was proclaiming his disgust in vibrant tones in the background. He had yet to forget grandma’s hypothesis about the knife. But mom’s smirk told him she wasn’t worried, so Peter couldn’t be either. He had to be strong for her. Strong like the father he’d never met, strong like Star-Lord. He could take down a biker if it meant protecting her – although given said biker was currently slopping about in soaked sheets and cussing every object he could see, that wasn’t an overly terrifying prospect.

Mom didn’t ask that of him though. She just reeled Peter in close, close enough to smell the chemicals on her breath, and pointed at the glass. “Go fetch that here, would you, dear? Then run and tell your grandma our guest has had a lil’ accident. We’ll discuss your fight later.”

Yondu attempted to sit, failed, and compromised by shooting Meredith a furious finger. “Oh, don’t’chu dare. You think I ain’t above snitchin’ on you, girlie?”

Merry’s smile was saccharine. “And who will mom believe, I wonder?”

“Fuck you!”

“Language.” But her smirk had flourished, vivacious in a way Peter hadn’t seen for months. As Yondu lobbed his pillow in her general direction – it bounced harmlessly off Peter’s shins – Peter burst into a bright peal of laughter of his own. The sound shocked the both of them. They turned to him: Yondu murderous but somehow non-threatening, caught in a juxtaposition between scarred-and-tattooed skinhead and the man who’d managed, however unconventionally, to make his mom happy; Meredith’s internal candle growing from a tealight to a bonfire.

“Peter,” she said. Delight infused each syllable. “I haven’t heard that sound in so long. My beautiful little boy…” Her request for a hug was gladly reciprocated. Yondu ceased pontificating on the injustice of being ganged up on by mother in son. He caught them both in a baleful glare.

“God, enough with the sentiment. Yer makin’ me nauseous.” Peter just held mom harder, and stuck his tongue out over her shoulder. Yondu rolled his eyes. “Seriously. Go get yer nanna like you’ve been told. I don’t even care anymore. Just quit the canoodlin’ and get me outta these wet sheets…”

Easier said than done. Grandpa’d fetched the gauze, as promised, but grandma insisted Merry’s eyes be spared the sight of her father mummifying a bare-ass biker from the knees up. Peter, by dint of being male, was spared her concern. As he had no way to wheedle out of helping, this meant leaving mom to face grandma’s scolding solo. Grandma, regardless of what Peter might think in the privacy of his mind, was far from stupid. She knew that draining a glass that big so fast would take more gulping power than any terminal cancer patient possessed. Peter dithered, hovering protectively by Merry’s side – but she reassured him with a squeeze of the hand.

”Go on, darling.” She winked at grandma. “I can handle myself.”

Peter believed it. She’d dealt with Yondu for a whole day after all – and judging by Yondu’s continued grumbling, she’d come out on top.

 

* * *

 

Yondu didn’t shut up all the way to the bathroom. He was propped by Jim on one side and Peter – a notably shorter crutch – on the other. He’d tried to tell Peter’s grandma that events hadn’t transpired as Peter and Merry told them, protesting his innocence with the tenacity of a toddler. Now he held the blanket around himself to preserve a little dignity. This was only at grandma’s insistence; he’d much rather spare himself the chafe. But if the choice came down to adhering to decency laws or being tossed out onto the Quill’s front porch to face the authorities, Yondu could suck it up.

“S’okay,” he muttered, as they crossed the threshold and the threadbare carpet gave way to chipped cold tile. He glowered at Merry over one bruised and bloody shoulder. “Needed a shower anyway.”

Peter seconded that. If Wade claimed that Merry smelt of death, he’d have a field day catching a whiff of Yondu. Sweat and raw meat and unctuous healing salve. But grandpa shook his head. “Not until your dressing’s ready to change. Now Peter – can you sit with him while I fetch the bandages?”

Of course he could. He’d helped pull off Operation-Embarrass-Yondu. He could do _anything_.

Peter perched on the toilet seat while Yondu folded to his knees, unable to sit. He leaned his non-splinted forearm on the lip of the bath. For a moment, there was silence. Then Peter spoke.

”Thank you for making my mom happy.”

Yondu, who’d been concentrating on swallowing the noises that threatened to erupt whenever his back brushed porcelain, twisted to Peter fast enough to make the whole damn lot twinge. He flinched as if he’d been jabbed with a cattle-prod. “Naw, thank _you_. Dammit, kid – I thought you was grateful. But _no,_ you gotta team up with yer momma – who’s one annoyin’ bird, if ya ask me – and get me in trouble with yer nanna. Now I’mma be kicked out. I won’t have nobody in the world. ‘Cept my bike and its panniers, of course – although you ain’t collected them for me yet, neither.”

Peter, expecting his gratitude to be met with grace, bristled. “Hey! You take that back. My mom’s awesome!”

“She’s a stuck-up lil’ lady who expects the whole damn world t’fall into her lap –“

“You can’t talk about her like that!”

“Oh?” Yondu’s eyebrows pinched together. “An’ why’s that?”

“Well…” Peter floundered for words. Had he really not guessed? Mom always said you shouldn’t get angry at ignorant folks, because all it meant was that they’d never been taught any better. And as much as Peter disliked school, he’d been raised to respect the worth of a good education. He figured he ought to inform Yondu of where his knowledge was lacking. He dipped his head closer to Yondu’s ear, socked feet sliding off the edges of the toilet seat. “She’s dying,” he whispered, _sotto voce_. “You can’t say rude things about dying people. S’not right.”

A beat. Then Yondu coughed up a hitching chuckle from the back of his throat. Peter’d mistake it for a pained grunt, if he weren’t for the accompanying grin. “Aw, Petey. Don’t’chu know? Of course ya gotta poke fun at dyin’ folks. It’s the only thing that reminds ‘em they’re still alive.”

…Well, that made zero sense. Mom knew she had life in her yet. If she was dead, Peter wouldn’t be able to come sit with her and kiss her cheeks and tell her he loved her. But while Yondu acted childish by grown-up standards, a grown-up he was nevertheless, which meant he was the expert on this sort of thing. Peter didn’t dare argue. He just nodded sagely, as if he knew exactly what Yondu was talking about, and changed the subject.

“So, what d’you want me to fetch from your bike?”

Yondu’s jaw worked silently a moment. “Ya mean yer actually gonna get ‘em for me?”

Peter shrugged, self-conscious. “I can’t carry ‘em both. They’re pretty big. But if you tell me what you want from them –“

“The white powder,” said Yondu immediately. “An’ the crystals. Blue ones. All bagged up like shit ya get from the doctors.” Then, realizing he’d replied too fast – “Uh. And, like, some of the lil’ trinkets, I guess. If they ain’t all been broken.”

“Trinkets?” Peter pondered what that could mean. Then froze, eyes bugging. “Hey! I said I’m not getting you any weapons!”

Yondu scoffed, sagging further over the bathtub. He studied the showerhead morosely. He might have been a grubby sort of guy, but there was a difference between the pleasant itch of road grit and this sticky goop. Whatever hoodoo poultice the kid’s grandparents had slathered him with, it felt like a cross between thin-spread paste and slices of cold salami stuck to his skin. “Only had one on me, an’ that’s broke now. Just fetch me them baggies an’ the lil’ figurines. Just be sure to hide ‘em good. Like a game – hide 'n’ go-seek, y’know? Only the bags are the hiders, and anyone ya catch snoopin’ around, they’re It.”

“Okay. I’m too big for tag though. Just so you know.” Yondu looked unimpressed. Peter, who’d hoped to elevate himself in Yondu’s eyes, strove to hide his disappointment. “Uh, can I ask a question?”

“Ya just did.

Ugh. “Like, a proper one.”

Yondu’s once-over was as thorough as suspicious. “Can’t ya just do as yer told?”

The urge to obey, to gain more approval, gnawed at Peter like hunger in his stomach. But curiosity bit deeper still. Peter sat on his hands to stop himself fidgeting. He emulated his perception of adulthood, forcing over-taut posture and a facial expression that would better suit a wax mannequin than a boy – and unconsciously channelled more than a little Nathan Summers into the bargain. “Tell me why I have to hide them!” he demanded.

Yondu’s response took a while to formulate. Peter decided it was because he was so impressed with his maturity. That or the lag could be blamed on his wounds – his back was laid open like the skinned rabbits Peter saw hanging in braces at the butcher’s, and now his fascination had worn off, looking at it too long made acid swarm up the back of Peter’s throat.

“Because, idiot, the stuff in them baggies is special. Like… like medicine, yeah? An’ if anyone sees ya with ‘em, they’ll get jealous. They might hurt you to get ‘em back.” He pressed a hand over his heart, earnest expression tarnished with amusement. “I couldn’t have that now, could I? Merry’d never forgive me.”

Peter stuck his nose in the air. “I won the fight, remember? I’ll be fine.” Rolling his shoulders – and shuddering at the lance of agony – Yondu pointed at him and grinned.

“Thas’ the spirit.”

But Peter had yet to be appeased. He twiddled around on the smooth white toilet cover, banging knees against the cistern, and addressed his question to the fan grate and the window above, whose cobwebbed corners were beyond the reach of grandma’s duster. The evening sun splashed into the bathroom like whiskey in a tumbler.

“Won’t those same people come after you though?” he asked, carding the dust as it drifted through the glossy golden rays. “It’d be safer to leave your crystals for the police to look after. I know Sheriff Summers and Deputy Logan; they’re tough folks, but decent. They could protect it for you.” He didn’t make the addendum Grandma would have wanted him to: ‘until you’re well enough to leave’. Grumpy Yondu might have been, but Peter hadn’t known him long enough to show him every song on mom’s tapedeck. He had to stay that long, at least.

“An’ the powder,” Yondu reminded him. “Don’t forget that. And naw, don’t’chu worry about me. I can look after myself.”

Peter gave his body a long look. It was sinking ever-more horizontal, legs scooting sideways across the tiled bathroom floor, and despite Yondu’s fierce expression, he seemed unable to stop it. “I’ll fetch it,” he said eventually. “But you have to promise me you’ll be nicer to mom.” Yondu had cheered mom up; for all his rough edges and gruffness, he deserved reward. Mom always said positive reinforcement worked best, so maybe if Peter offered Yondu’s special baggies in exchange for moderately good behaviour, he’d be nicer in future? It was worth a try.

Yondu laughed, husky and low. His eyes had that hooded dimness to them, like those of a frog being crushed beneath Wade’s boot, and despite the muggy heat of the air he couldn’t seem to stop trembling. “Boy, if you bring me my crystals, I’ll make yer momma feel like she’s walkin’ on air.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Comments are a writer's lifeblood.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which Peter hunts bikes, and Yondu ain't happy (when is he ever?)**

The evening was moist and hot, sweat clinging to skin. Flies buzzed through the bright circle cast by a filament bulb. As the sunlight waned to shadow, they scuttled in and out of that circle faster and faster, the rasping cadence of their wings like a hundred faraway chainsaws all being revved at once.

Peter unlatched the door. His breath hung claggy in his throat. At any second he expected a flick to the ears from granddad, or worse: grandma’s voice, enquiring in its usual crotchety waver _just where do you think you're going at this time of night, young man?_ Over the road, the Summers's house loomed. Its gables were murky grey in the twilight, front porch glazed blue by the overhead zapper. The occasional sharp pop of a bluebottle meeting its end offset the usual night-time chorus: the perpetual cricket hum, the drag of tyres over tarmac, the stir of the sweltering breeze.

Peter placed one foot on the step. Then the other. The old wood bowed slightly, but it didn't creak. Reassured, Peter bounded down onto the lawn, sneakers crushing dry grass. Everything was sun-bleached at this time of year. In the daytime the street was a blinding salvo of glares, light reflecting from the chipped white window awnings and the lines painted down the middle of the road. At night, this all faded. The town looked sinister and bleak, a photo-negative of itself.

Nervous sweat soaked Peter's collar. Compared to the sticky night air, the cold prickle was sharp and intense, as if someone had run icy fingers along his hairline. Peter jumped. Checked behind him. But the door remained closed, and no monsters lunged out to snatch him, and so he tiptoed along the grass besides the path, not wanting to give himself away by crunching over gravel, and turned left onto the street, towards where the cul de sac dwindled into patchy woodland.

He'd brought his torch. Going into the wood without it was unimaginable. But he waited until the houses had been eclipsed by the trees, boughs swaying overhead, before he snapped it on. The glare illuminated a rotted old trunk and dry earth pitted with rabbit holes. “C'mon,” he whispered to himself, picking his way through the bracken. “C'mon, you can do this. You know the way. Along the crik until you can see the road, then just follow it up the straight. Can't miss the bike. You know the way.”

The running commentary helped. It took five steps for the perfume of fresh-mown grass to be obscured by the wetter, earthier smells of the woods: fungi and mold, lichens and mosses that grew on the trees' dark sides. The forest rose up around him, gargantuan and ancient. Peter felt miniscule and massive all at once. He was a speck compared to the towering oaks, but every clumsy footfall announced his presence through the gunshot snap of twigs and leaves, startling nocturnal critters out of the undergrowth. The wink as his torchlight reflected off their wide, saucer-like eyes made Peter shiver; he forced himself to watch his path, avoid the leaf-litter, instead creeping along where the track was most worn. “You can do this. You can do this. You're a big boy. You're doing this for mom. You can do this.”

He edged further from the comforting gold smears of the streetlights. The beam of his torch was all that split the black, and Peter's resolve began to quiver like the bodies of the rabbits and wildfowl, who shrunk down in the foliage until his footsteps had passed. He forced himself to keep walking, timing his breaths to the plod of his sneakered feet.

“You're doing this for mom. You're doing this for mom. You're a big boy, you can do this, you're doing this for mom.”

All he had to do was retrieve the saddlebags. If he did what Yondu asked, Yondu would stay and he'd make Peter's mom smile again. That was the deal. Peter was old enough to keep his promises; he had to follow through, or Yondu'd be mad – or worse, disappointed.

His shoe treads squeaked over a twig too thick to snap. There was an answering scurry from the brush. Shrubs and ferns jostled in a madcap dance. Peter reared back, heart hammering. He span his torch, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise – only to have the bright beam pick out a bunny, huge fearful eyes flashing in the gloom.

He jumped. The rabbit bolted.

The forest announced its passage; the tops of the thistles swayed and twitched. Above, an owl hooted its disgruntlement and flapped silently to a new perch, blotting the moon with its wingspan as it passed overhead like a huge feathered bat.

Peter breathed out. Lowered his torch, and clutched his chest until his heart quit trying to bounce out of it. “You're okay,” he said, as if to remind himself. “Not far now. Not far. You can do this.”

It might not have seemed far by daylight, but at night it was a different story. The half-kilometer between the forest's edge and the start of the stream might as well have stretched for lightyears. Peter stumbled on every other root. He tripped over every weed tuft. He fell more than once, oofing as the air punched out of him, torch skittering away to shine on a twisted trunk, a leaning fern. But eventually, grazed palms and dirty knees – and grandma would want to know how he got his jeans so mucky, but Peter would suss out that lie once he got to it – he heard the chatter of water over stone.

The brook looked black as oil. It bounced from bank to bank, leaping and spraying, scouring the outside of the meander in an undercut disguised by the fronds of hanging grass. If Peter stepped too close he'd risk wet sneakers. And while the stream was narrow enough to jump, the dancing, swirling water didn't look nearly so playful by night. Peter imagined himself swept away, creek surging into a torrent. Imagined his grandpa combing the woods next morning. His mom sitting in bed with her cheek pressed to the window, watching and waiting, while grandma tried to get her to lay down and take her medicine. Grandpa tramped through the mud around the estuary, until he found his body facedown amongst the plastic bags and shopping carts, drowned in stinking mud...

He also imagined Yondu grinning as Peter handed over the saddlebags. That settled it.

Clenching his jaw, Peter picked his way along the bank, a safe half-step from the edge. He occasionally cast his torch at his feet to make sure he wasn't veering off course, two-AA-batteries'-worth of light glancing back at him from the water. His reflection shone in streaks and slices, like a shredded newspaper blowing in the wind. But Peter could still pick out his pinched white face, his shock of ginger hair. He looked so small. So scared. Foolish little boy, out in the woods after bedtime – like a lost kid in a fairy tale. But no hands reached from the shadows, and no ogre demanded toll. Peter shone his torch ahead of him, smacking it when it flickered, and walked.

 

* * *

 

He didn't know how long it took to reach the road. Without the sun, time was immeasurable. The only way to deduce its passing was by his too-short breaths and the percussionist's drumroll of his heart. But once he was there, the transition from hard-baked woodland earth to harder tarmac was unmistakable.

Peter hugged the verge. Last thing he needed was to fall under the wheels of a passing truck. Yondu might be a bit of an a-hole, but Peter knew it wasn't every guy who threw himself off his ride to avoid squashing a child. Next time, he wouldn't be so lucky. He sidled along the edge of the road, where the dust and potholes gathered. Every few steps he angled his torch to glance off the trees, looking for the metallic throwback of the light. The bike was somewhere nearby. He was sure of it.

It was as his torch picked out the crushed grass that led to the collision site, char and a few stray splashes of what he sincerely hoped weren't Yondu's blood strewn out in all directions, that a pair of headlights appeared in the distance. Peter blinked at them, shocked still by the brightness. They were weaving about, and it took him several seconds too long to realize this was because they belonged to two separate vehicles, rather than a jeep that had flipped and was tumbling towards him like the boulder in _Indiana Jones._

Bikes. Bikes like Yondu's.

Peter fumbled with his torch, turning it to the ground. His hands shook as he groped for the off switch. The light puddled around his sneakers. Then abruptly clicked out, immersing him in a darkness so suffocating it felt like he was being smothered. Peter couldn't panic though. He refused. He glanced along the road, to where those lights were now accompanied by the purr of engines, and waded into the vergeside grasses, praying he didn't tread on anything squishy.

When Yondu first met Peter, in those three frenzied seconds of internal swearing, he'd braked hard, skidded around one-eighty degrees, and flung himself bodily in the opposite direction. His bike had exited the road at a sharp angle, almost a hairpin. As a result, while it'd be obvious to any traveler outwards-bound from Marmington, it was near invisible from the Selma direction. The bikes were approaching at speed, scenery sluicing by in a slippery rush. Even with their powerful headlamps, which turned the road into a long shining black obelisk that stretched from their front wheels all the way to the distant town, they wouldn't see it unless they stopped and searched.

Peter crouched over the twisted, ugly remains of a fender. He clambered half on top of it, shoes squeaking off the metal, desperate not to be given away by the shine. He pulled a face as condensation soaked his shirt. To his right, the purr grew into a growl, then a roar. It was an endless guttural crescendo intermitted with the chugs of a chopper engine, the two bikes subtly differentiated by pitch, one nasal, one bass. Peter tucked tighter, wincing. The noise was skull-aching, rattling him apart, so loud he wanted to clap his hands over his ears...

But as soon as it had grown, it shrank again. The bikes sailed on by. The riders were black shapes, featureless like they'd been cut from the night. The ferns stirred as they passed, wafting away from Peter's hunched form. He stayed right where he was, petrified. What if one of them turned their head? What if they saw the boy among the waving grass?

Peter's torch weighed heavy in his hand. What would he do, if they stopped? Shine it at them? Try to dazzle them, then run while they were wincing? Throw it at them? Use it as a sword, one that was blunt and short and pointless in all senses of the word?

Fortunately, the bikers only had eyes for their destination. Their snarling engines petered back down the scale, until all Peter could isolate from the rustling leaves was that brassy undertone, deep as a big cat's purr. Only when that too had faded did he sit, peeling himself off the fender with an exhale so long and heavy it threatened to deflate his lungs.

He restarted his mantra as his palms mapped the buckled shape of the bike. “You're okay. You can do this. You're okay – ow!”

He wasn't sure what caught him. But one moment he was running his hand over the dinged shell of a wheel guard, and the next his finger _sliced_. When Peter sucked it into his mouth he tasted copper. “Ow!” he said again, louder. No one was listening. As there was no sympathy forthcoming, Peter wasn't quite sure how to proceed. Tears prickled in his eyes, senses honed on the hot throb, his finger feeling as if it had swollen to ten times its size. He sat for a full half-minute, finger in mouth, grimacing as he battled to hold back both the tears and any further exclamations of pain.

He was a big boy. He could do this. And there was no one here to bandage him up and kiss it better. The longer he let the pain control him, the longer he had to stay out here.

Once the burn had lessened to a tolerable level – one where Peter could think with something approaching logic – he spat the finger out, mouth wet with spit-diluted blood, and snapped on his torch to assess the damage. The cut wasn't big but it was deep, running over the sensitive pad, slashing straight across the whorl. The edges of the skin shifted when he tried to flex it, and agony hit like a fist to the guts, making Peter curl around this new hurt and stifle whimpers in his sleeve.

But the bike was right there, cold and silver under the moonlight. Peter's torch lay propped in his lap, warm around the bulb, illuminating the scuffs and scratches that marred the metal panelling in sharp relief. And there, their straps wrenched and snapped but still tethered onto the bike's body by a few sturdy threads, were the panniers.

Peter couldn't give up now. Not when he was so close.

“The white powder,” he whispered to remind himself. He balled his hand into a bloody fist. “The crystals. Blue crystals. Any of the trinkets. Load up as much as you can carry and take them to Yondu and... and make sure nobody sees.” Yondu had been very, _very_ adamant about that. To the extent where he'd threatened that if Peter got spotted, Yondu was never gonna make his mom laugh again, and he'd ride out of town at the first opportunity, whether his arm was properly splinted or otherwise. Peter couldn't have that on his conscience. Sniffling, he wiped his runny nose on the less-achy hand, then on his cuff when that only smeared. He wobbled around to the bike's flank, torchlight skating the rollercoaster swoop from where the tree had wrapped it around itself before both had crashed to the earth. Splinters peppered the ground, branches caked in molten rubber. Peter could still smell it, faint and sour, kinda like tarmac on a hot day.

Wincing, he hugged his sore hand to his chest and slid the other into the nearest saddlebag. Time to make Yondu proud.

 

* * *

 

Yondu woke, bright and early. That was unusual. Left to his own devices, he'd slouch about in bed until midday at the very best, then be up and bouncing half the night. It'd driven Kraggles near barmy, that time they shared a trailer on a job run. He'd actually threatened to tie his boss to his bed if it'd keep him still – but he'd backed off quick when Yondu grinned and told him that'd just turn him on.

He wondered where that gangly piss-streak was now. And the rest of his gang, for that matter. The Ravagers ran wild and free – they wouldn't let an absentee boss distract them. So long as Yondu was languishing here rather than out on the road, fronting their charge where he belonged, anything could have happened. The old turf war with the Horde could be festering again. Taserface could be stitching the President patch onto his vest. And there lay Yondu: face down on a bed, groaning as Merry wrenched open the curtains and invited in the sunlight to torture him. As if his skinless back wasn't doing a good enough job.

Thing was, Yondu wasn't above hitting girls. Specially not if they'd tossed the first punch. He was an equal-opportunities kinda guy – hit him and you'd get a lovetap right back in the middle of your face, _bam,_ bonny good looks crushed by knuckledusters and a nice big fist, whether you identified as male, female, or a goddam helicopter. But hitting a cancer patient? That was too far, even by the dubious and tenuous margins of what Ravagers called an honor-code. Yondu made do for groaning and shooting her the finger. “Fuck a goddam duck. Five more fuckin' minutes, woman...”

“Not likely,” chirped the disgustingly chipper response. “We need our Vitamin D.” She was, in Yondu's opinion, beyond the point where sunlight could save her. But that didn't put her off. Merry cracked the window and took a deep, cleansing lungful of suburban summer air. She smiled, like all her cares had been washed away. If he couldn't see the thinness of her back through her nightie and the way her remaining hair straggled like wet spaghetti across her scalp, Yondu might have been fooled.

He burrowed his face in the pillow again. Then, when that failed to block out the light, under it.

There was even _birdsong._ Why, if Taserface barged down the door and unloaded his desert eagle into Yondu's bollocks right about now, Yondu'd thank him for it.

Only when the door burst open, it wasn't Taserface standing there, pistol primed and ready, braced to take the kickback, aiming dead-on for Yondu's balls. It was Peter. He looked frantic, moreso than Yondu'd ever seen the kid. He was dripping, fresh from the shower, but there was mud on his cheek and scuffs decorating the knees of his jeans. Hardly the most subtle. Yondu gestured to one of the many twiggy ornaments caught in the kid's ginger hair. “You, uh, got a lil' somethin'...”

Peter's eyes were a little too harried, a little too wide. Then clocked his momma's stare, who took in the sight of her dear darling ragamuffin with a cross between horror and amusement. He fished out a handful of twigs, snapping hairs with a wince, and wiped his dirty cheek on his cuff. Of course, the mud only smeared. Peter wound up with one side of his face freckled pink and the other streaky brown. And dammit, but they didn't have long before the Quills Senior creaked outta their cots to see what was all the hullaballoo.

Yondu eased upright, folding the blanket over his bare shins. Grandpappy Quill had deemed him able to wear boxers, for which his pride was grateful and his sore ass weren't. But if it meant he was allowed to sleep in this room without Grandma Quill playing chaperone with a shotgun, he would bear the chafe with grace. “Kid, c'mere,” he said, patting the mattress. Peter complied, trusting as a pup – and it struck Yondu not for the first time how _nice_ it was, to have someone who wasn't afraid of him. Peter even remembered to tiptoe – as if he hadn't rocked the entire house with the force with which he'd crashed into his mama's sickroom. But hey; Yondu appreciated the effort.

“Yondu? Yondu, I gotta tell you something. It's about the secret...”

“Yeah, I'd figured that much.” Yondu placed his hands on Peter's shoulders, pressing to keep him still. Jittery brat. Then pinched his chin to stop it wagging and turned his face from side to side, tutting under his breath. “Look atcha. Right lil Wild Thing – you read that book yet?” Peter's nod confirmed it, as did the grin. Yondu made that grin fade when he shook his head. “Boy, this ain't no way to come greet yer mama in the morning.”

Peter pouted. He turned to Merry for support – only to find none. Having pieced together the scraps of information in front of her, Merry had surmised that firstly, Peter had been out past curfew, secondly, grandma and granddad didn't know, and thirdly, for some reason, Yondu did. Right now she was sat with her arms folded across a chest that had about as much meat on it as a picked carcass. Yondu'd seen heftier skeletons. “Petey. Where've you been, hon?”

Ugh. Best she not get all het up over this – if the truth of Peter's lil midnight mission came to light, Yondu would be carted off to jail for drug possession, intent to distribute, and manslaughter after Pretty Miss Quill's heart gave out. He shot Peter a warning look. _C'mon boy. Secret, remember?_

Peter did. His nervous expression wobbled into a smile, which he only turned on his mama once certain it wasn't going to slide straight off his face the moment it came up against her glare. “Me and Wade made a bet. He said I was too scaredy to run through the woods at night. I had to do it, mommy! I'm no wuss!”

“That you ain't,” Yondu agreed. He sat back a little, looking down at the ball of ginger fuzz and twigs that was perched on the bed edge, inches short of being in his lap. “Brought back half the forest with ya, though.”

Merry's scowl found an older, and more worthy, victim. “You knew about this?”

“Course.” Yondu scrumpled Peter's hair hard enough to get the worst of the remaining sticks out. “Ain't no harm in it. He's a kid.”

“He is _my_ kid. And _I_ say that grandma's curfew is made to be adhered to!”

Great. Now her voice had risen. Grandma was gonna storm in with bazooka at this rate. Yondu wasn't that great with the whole soothing-dames business, especially when he was in no state to grab said dames and shake 'em until they quit yodelling. He concentrated on easier alternatives. He nudged Peter until he faced him again, then spat on his thumb and, catching the brat's ear so he couldn't escape, wiped the dirt off his cheek.

“There,” he said proudly, while Peter wailed “Ew” and Merry's brewing tirade was stunted by a laugh that surprised her as much as it did Yondu. “Thas better. Don't look like we fished you out the creek no more.” Peter's side-eye was sheepish. Judging by his freshly-showered appearance, and the trail of muddy footprints just visible if Yondu craned to see the hall, Peter had done that himself. “You take a misstep? Or was it another frog?”

Merry chimed in then, shifting to kneel on her crisp white sheets. “You better not have gotten in another fight! Why, I'm thinking I should call this Wade boy's parents...”

“ _Moooooom_ ,” Peter groaned. He rolled his eyes like she had just suggested she walk him to school and kiss him goodbye in front of all his playground friends. Which was cute, and all – but Yondu had given him a job. Peter might be young, as of yet, but that didn't mean he could shirk on his duties. Yondu expected it to have been completed.

“So?” he prompted, shuffling towards the headboard to allow the kid more room to sit. Sprawl, more like. Yondu was glad the worst of his injuries were confined to his arm and his back, else the kid's gleeful bouncing on top of his legs would've added child-murder to his ever-growing rap sheet. “How was... Y'know. The woods. Scary? You find everything you was lookin' for?”

Peter puffed up. “Scary? Pff. I wasn't scared at all! Not even when the bikers -” His eyes popped wide. Then thinned to conspiratorial slits. “ _Oh._ And uh. I found everything. Sort of.”

“Sort of,” repeated Yondu flatly. He didn't like 'sort of'. He needed his stash – if not for his own pain relief, then for peace of mind. Sure, there was a danger Grandma Quill'd find it if he stuffed it under his mattress – but at least it wouldn't fall into the hands of those who were chasing him, police or rival gang members alike. And anyway, he'd be on his feet in a week. When that time came, should Mrs Quill take his stash to the pigs, Yondu would be more than willing to demonstrate how well he'd healed by tackling her to the ground and garroting her with one of her cross-stitched tea towels.

Quill nodded along. He stuck a cut finger in his mouth - just a lil' thing, blood barely beading around the skin, nothing to write home about - in his mouth and sucked contemplatively while he spoke. “They were empty. The uh. Woods, I mean. Yeah, they were empty alright. Nothing but dust. And uh, this.” He presented a little blue glass figurine, grinning like he'd handed Yondu the fucking nuclear clearance codes. It was a miracle it hadn't shattered in the crash. It was also a miracle that Yondu had yet to grab it and hurl it at the wall. If Peter's stilted, off-cadence sentences struck Merry as strange, Yondu was too busy resisting the urge to wrap his fingers round the boy's throat and _squeeze_  to notice.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Holy fuck, another chapter?? Sorry for the massive hiatus - got distracted, as usual. But I can see this human!au becoming of way more interest to me after the film, so keep tabs on this fic...**


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which Peter attends school, Nathan is concerned, and Logan and Scott make a discovery.**

The car pulled into the lot at two o'clock sharp, just as the end-of-recess bell set up its clamorous rattle in the neighboring elementary school.

Peter, sat alone on the tyre and meditating over his sandwich, cocked his head at the pretty young woman who unfurled from the driver's seat and pranced to the far passenger door. As he was facing away from him, he couldn't see much of the man she let out, other than his broad shoulders and the fluff of his grey-brown hair.

Peter squinted, picking the crusts away from the soft white innards of his bread. There were five minutes on the clock before the teachers noticed he was late for registration. Kicking his sneakers against the hollow tyre, he waited for the man to turn, even by a fraction.

He couldn't help being curious. Strangers were rare in Marmington. But this week, they'd flocked to the small Georgia town in their droves. First Yondu, then the bikers from last night, who (according to the local gossip mill) had been loitering around the trailer park since first light and showed no signs of leaving. And now this slick-suited gentleman as well? Peter wondered if they were all connected, like the interweaving plots in the mystery novels mom sometimes had him read her.

Maybe this man was an assassin! He'd warn Yondu when he got home.

He was distracted from his musings by the quiet, polite rap of knuckles besides his trainer sole. The tyre was half-buried in the dirt. It had been looted from some old farm tractor or another, tough and weathered after years of abuse from every young girl and boy who passed through the Marmington Elementary gates. Nevertheless, to the eight-year-old Peter, Nathan Summer's fist looked like it might put a dent in it, if he really tried.

Peter jumped. The sun-warmed treads scratched him through his jeans.

“Sorry, Summers. I'm coming. Didn't mean to be late -”

“It's not that.” For the first time since he was introduced to the serious older boy, when grandma insisted they invite the new neighbors round for potluck and Peter had spent an hour trying and failing to make him smile, Nathan looked _worried._ “Have you seen Wade?”

“No,” said Peter happily. Then his expression tensed, and he dropped his sandwich in its box. “Why, have you? Is he gonna punch me again?”

“To be fair, you punched him back.”

“He started it!”

“And I finished it. Peter, I know you both walk to school through the woods. You saw no sign of him?”

Eleven-year-olds shouldn't sound so serious. But Nathan was the policeman's son, so Peter figured that made him exempt.

“No,” he said, shaking his head to enforce it. “M'sorry, Nate.”

It was rare to see Nate displaying his emotions rather than swallowing them. But even he had a hard time choking down his worry.

“Get to class,” he told Peter. “I'm right behind you.”

Peter did as he was told. As the sun dazzled on the window of the playground door, he caught Nathan's reflection: stood with his back to him, one hand raised to shade his eyes, silhouetted against the light like a cowboy in an old western movie. He was squinting at the far-off humps and hillocks of the treeline, as if Wade's figure would merge out of the shadows if he only stared hard enough.

Peter swung the door shut behind him. He gobbled the rest of sandwich in three hamster-cheeked bites, shoved the box into his backpack, and trotted off to class. So Wade was missing? Good riddance to bad rubbish, as grandma would say.

 

* * *

 

Class passed as it usually did – slowly.

Peter, in the way of small children, had a tendency to let whatever he'd just seen drift from his mind as soon as his thoughts migrated elsewhere. And yet he couldn't get that car – the one carrying the girl and the man – out of his head. The hands on the clock dial seemed determined to thwart his plans to find out who they were and why they were here.

As for the empty seat at the front of the classroom, where Wade had been placed in the vain hope that sitting directly under the teacher's nose would make him less prone to mischief? No one seemed to find his absence unusual. Peter couldn't blame them. Only Nate would care about a bully, and he was probably just miffed that Wade was playing truant.

Peter doodled through his sums, chanting along boredly to times-tables and the scratch of Miss Romanov's chalk over the whiteboard. Grandpa and grandma had several choice things to say about Miss Romanov, which primarily revolved around (in grandpa's case) her nationality and surname, and (in grandma's case) her impeccable hourglass of a figure. Peter, being too young to care about either of these things, would've liked her if she didn't try to teach him so much math.

“Peter,” she said. Her smile was almost too sweet, like she'd worked on perfecting the exact angle at which to curl her lips to reassure a struggling child. Her features were small and delicate as a dolls, but she contoured them carefully, so as to look fresh and crisp rather than seductive. Peter had a working theory that she was a spy, although no one but Wade was mad enough to listen. “Can you recite the fours from twenty-eight?”

Peter glared at his shoddy, stick-man patched notes, angry that they'd betrayed him in his hour of need. He began, slowly, mumbling the answers he wasn't sure about and occasionally conscripting his fingers to help him count. By the time he'd finished to Miss Romanov's satisfaction, the clock had crept through another agonizingly small fraction, and the car in the lot – just visible through the blinds, which were lowered and half-slatted in an attempt to get the children to focus while letting in some of the buttery-hot sunlight – had pulled away.

Peter sighed to himself. Romanov assumed he was distraught after stumbling through his sums, and made sure to congratulate him for the effort. But when Peter's eyes trailed to the window for the fifth time in as many minutes, wandering over the little row of shops on the highstreet opposite – a newsagents, a bakery, a grocer's, a butcher's, and a family lawyer's – in the hopes he could spot what the man in the car had been examining so intently, Miss Romanov took control of the blind pull. She decided the loss of the sunlight was a small price to pay for his concentration.

 

* * *

 

By the time the bell rang, the overpowering heat of the midday sun had been soaked up by the tarmac and the grass and the iron fencing around the playground. Heat radiated at the released children not just from above, but from all around.

In the absense of Wade, a few of the pluckier kids had decided to invest in sweets. Peter fingered his pockets for coins and, finding quarters, joined them.

It wasn't often he approached a pack of parents. Too many sympathetic looks, too many faux-concerned comments whispered under breaths and behind cupped hands. _Who'll look after the boy, when Meredith's gone? Poor dear. Not even a father in the picture... And his grandparents aren't the youngest – won't be long before he's all alone._

Peter did his best to ignore them. He followed the pack of mommies and kids and the occasional yapping teacup-dog, close enough that he could smell the women's perfume and whatever they'd been cooking for dinner; but far enough back that none of them felt tempted to ruffle his hair. The newsagent's walls peeled like flaky sunburn. Paint scrolled from the whitewashed walls in long stripes, and the sandwich board outside, black as pitch in contrast, was almost scalding to the touch.

Grandma offered to walk him to and from school – or threatened, more like – after every Wade-incident. But she'd never contemplate letting him buy foam shrimps two-to-a-cent (or at least, not before dinner). Change jangled in Peter's hand, and his grin lit his face like a taper held to the tinder-dry woodland.

The blast of cool air from the refrigeration units by the door, which contained such delights as Mystery Meat buns and custard doughnuts, was near-blissful. Peter stood there a moment, absorbing as much of the cool air as he could, before a string of mommies broke away from the counter and he had to squeeze into the corner to allow them to exit.

 _Anish's,_ said the sign. But as the sun baked the paint into sawdust-curls, it revealed the name of the last owner. It had never scraped away. Instead it had been daubed over, and studying the two names together was like looking at a doubled-up typewriter line.

Peter, shoving foam shrimp in his mouth at a rate that was liable to choke him, tipped his head at the overlaid letters, trying to work out what the sign had once read.

_E._

That was definitive. Whoever had owned this shop had gone to the somewhat extravagant expense of having their name embossed, which might seem odd for a smalltown newsagents to anyone with more experience of the world than Peter. But as he'd been walking past this corner store for more than half his life – nearly five years now! - the sight of that _E,_ its spokes crudely filled in with paint but never quite rendered invisible, was another part of the unchanging Marmington scenery, like the tyre in the playground and the vast open sky.

Getting a glimpse at the other letters was a rare treat though. It wouldn't be long before Anish got out a stepladder and redid it, so Peter made the most of this opportunity.

“G,” he said, dragging out the vowel sound for the duration it took him to work out what followed. “U – no, O! Ego! Ego's. Huh. Funny name for a shop. Wonder what it means?”

But his mouth was so full of shrimp that none of the passing pedestrians could've understood him if they tried.

 

* * *

 

Peter saved five shrimp and an aniseed ball for mom, as was custom. Then, remembering their houseguest, he took a sucked-but-unchewed foam banana out of his mouth and added it to the brown paper bag. He trotted over the prow of the hill, waving to those who waved first and a few who didn't, and ignoring all smiles and kind greetings sent his way by the adults who'd schooled and danced and smoked with his mom, but who never bothered to visit after the doctor gave his verdict, because they _didn't want to intrude._

Ahead, the woods cast the promise of cooler shade. Bag crinkling in his grip and eyes bright with anticipation for a walk free of pondweed, punches, or Wade's gap-toothed smirk, Peter made a beeline.

He grabbed a stick to swish through the undergrowth as he walked, humming along to _Hooked on a Feeling._ He didn't like taking the Walkman out with him, not when there were water sources and Wade in the vicinity, but that was okay. He knew all mom's songs off by heart anyway.

Swish, swish, swish. The cut of the stick through the bracken was comforting – a repetitive, scything motion that sent grass seeds and bugs whizzing in all directions. An ant ran up his forearm, and Peter blew it off before tossing the stick away, sending its tiny body tumbling down, down, down, back to the woodland floor.

The light dappled over him, like paint flicked from the end of a brush, changing with the rustle of the canopy overhead. And then, abruptly, the muted gold-green tones of the forest turned to blue.

Bright, vivid, policecar blue.

Peter, ever-curious, stole closer. The woodland was disarmed in daylight. What had made him pick up his pace on his nighttime excursion – boughs creaking overhead, the smell of animal rot – now seemed safe and tame, compared to the torch-lit gloom. When he peeped from the treeline, he saw a police car pulled over by the side of the road, and not one, not two, but three uniformed men standing round the bike.

“Shit,” said Peter. Then clapped a hand over his mouth on automatic, because he wasn't supposed to know that word, and shrunk behind the nearest trunk when Officer Summers looked around.

“What was that?”

His partner Logan, a beefy, hairy man who was both shorter than and could probably bench-press Yondu – both impressive – shrugged. He held the leash of a dog, who nosed over the emptied saddlebags like it was snuffling for rabbits. “Animal. C'mon bub. You're too nervous. Let's leave this for forensics and grab a coffee.”

“You'll only try to make it Irish, and we're still on the clock.” Summers was still staring in his direction. Peter was sure of it. He squeezed his arms tight around his torso, hunching behind the trunk, and held his breath. The words washed over him more than he was listening to them. “And of course I'm _nervous._ You've heard about what's happening in Selma. The Ravagers, the Sovereign, the Horde... Too many goddamn pieces on an overcrowded board.”

Logan gave the dog's leash two sharp tugs, other hand parked with the thumb tucked behind his gun-holster. “Hey, this could be an ordinary crash. Nothing to do with them Selma nutjobs.”

“Not when Laura's so het up.” Scott's attempt to give the Alsatian a pat almost saw him relieved him of his fingers. “Ow! Logan, what the hell -”

“I told ya,” Logan growled, giving Laura's collar another yank – although Peter couldn't help but note that under his fuzzy sideburns and heavy brows, he was smirking. “She don't like you. Very good judge of character, my girl.”

“Honestly, you treat that dog better than your son.”

“Yeah, well. You wait until your Nathan hits the teenage years, and see how you deal with him then. Daken's a good kid, deep down.” He and Scott shared a look. “Very, _very_ deep down. Now, let's leave this to Kurt. I'm sure he can rip some fingerprints off this here.” He toed at the bike's chassis, warped around the shape of the tree.

The chassis where Peter had planted his hands for balance, leaving clammy smears on the metal, not three nights ago.

“Shit,” he whimpered again.

He tiptoed deeper into the forest, heart hammering and ready for the belt of “Stop and drop!” at any moment. Then, once he could no longer hear the mumble of Scott and Logan's voices as they moved onto the next most important questions – where were the paniers' contents, and where was the biker? - he ran.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Like this fic? Leave a comment or rec it elsewhere! x**

**Author's Note:**

> **I fucking can't wait to bring Ego in on this shitfest.**


End file.
